50 Years Later: The St. Augustine Demonstrations

The warming tide of change swept across America’s oldest continually-inhabited settlement, St. Augustine, 50 years ago this week with the passage of national civil rights legislation in Congress.

There in mid-June, like in many other southern American cities, came a tipping point in the struggle for justice and equality. Mere days before Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. joined 36th U.S. president Lyndon Baines Johnson for the signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in D.C., he went to St. Augustine in northwest Florida to protest alongside youth Baby Boomers for equitable access to American living.

King would be joined in St. Augustine by the wives and mothers of America’s biggest business leaders, rabbis, and everyday Americans of varying shades. St. Augustine would be the only place in Florida where King would be arrested.

The footage above made available by the State Library and Archives of Florida is a glimpse into a northern Florida town during the early summer of 1964, where some of the last vestiges of American apartheid were to be broken before ethnic discrimination in public accommodation was effectively outlawed days later.

See video full blog and video at http://tmblr.co/ZIeMwx1In0iTZ